Foundation, One Piece, and other TV notes

I finally finished watching season 3 of The Witcher, a continuation of a gritty version of a Tolkien-like world, with elves, dwarves, other creatures, and magic.

On balance I enjoyed it, but not as much as the previous seasons. I’m not sure why. Part of it might be that the romantic drama between Geralt and Yennifer is starting to feel old. Another possibility is that the season got released in two parts, which just broke the stride. Although I didn’t even binge through the first half of the episodes when they dropped. It might be as simple as it being released in the summer instead of the Christmas season.

Still, the second half was pretty entertaining. And dark. Always dark. This was Henry Cavill’s last season playing Geralt. The part is reportedly being taken over by Liam Hemsworth next season. It’ll be interesting to see if Hemsworth’s portrayal changes anything.

Foundation completed its second season. As I’ve noted before, this adaptation is very different from Isaac Asimov’s books.

I recently read somewhere that Frank Herbert’s Dune was actually written as a response to the original Foundation series, but with the heroes and villains reversed. Asimov has the people with a centuries long plan for humanity as the heroes, and the biggest villain is a mutant who throws the whole thing off course. Herbert makes the mutant the hero, a result of the hubris of those with the grand plan.

I mention this because, in many ways, I find the TV show something of a blend between them. It features religion and cultural exploration much more prominently than the books. It even has a separate spacer society, similar to the Spacing Guild in the Dune universe. So far the heroes are still the people with the plan. So far.

I emphasize that last point because at the end of the season, the show thoroughly dispenses with any remaining illusion the books provide insights on where things are going. It’s more accurate to say it burns that illusion to ash and smears our faces into it.

Another illusion the TV version barely bothered with is the one of Seldon mathematically predicting everything in advance. Asimov himself eventually abandoned it in the books, but not before getting a lot of mileage out of the psychohistory idea. The show has things getting messy much earlier, almost as though highlighting the hubris of having a grand thousand year plan.

While it’s far from perfect, I’m still enjoying it.

A couple years ago I went on an anime binge (see May through August 2021 in the blog archives, or search for “anime”.) One series I took a hard look at was One Piece, a fantasy series about pirates in a world that seems roughly equivalent to the 18th century Caribbean, but with occasionally some 20th century technology mixed in. Similar to Pirates of the Caribbean, there’s magic. It’s one of the most heavily recommended anime around.

But at the time, it’s one thousand episode arc just seemed too daunting, much more of a commitment than I cared to make. I did watch a couple of episodes, just to see if it might be worth it. They were entertaining, but like most anime for me, not an instant hook, so I moved on.

Recently Netflix released a live action adaptation. Eight episodes is a much easier chunk to bite off so I gave it a try, and enjoyed it a great deal. I should caution anyone reading this that I’ve historically enjoyed most of the live action adaptations of anime that everyone else hated, including Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop, so take this thumbs up with a grain of salt.

That said, this adaptation is getting a lot of good reviews. I’m kind of curious why this one is faring better. I think some of it might be that the characters feel much more like anime characters than most live action versions. Not having watched much of the anime, I can’t be sure, but maybe overall the success of this effort is due to it sticking much more closely to the original’s mythology, so fans of the anime aren’t alienated. Maybe.

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There are two other shows I’m watching still in their latest season run, Wheel of Time and Ahsoka.

Wheel of Time is another Tolkien-like setting, although with a lot of interesting twists. I recall reading the first two or three books in the series in the early 90s, but remember very little of the story. In fact, I remember so little that at times when watching the show, I’ve wondered if my memory of reading anything but the opening chapters of the first book were accurate. But Egwene’s storyline with the Seanchean is very familiar, so apparently I did read at least that far.

Interestingly enough, I’m having a much stronger emotional reaction to the Seanchan than the main villains of the series. The Dark Friends seem like kind of classic villainy (at least so far), while the Seanchan seem brutal in a way all too familiar in history, with a self assured conviction that they’re the only true authority in the world. I’m hoping really bad things happen to them later in the series.

Ahsoka is the latest Star Wars series. In large part, it’s a continuation of the animated Rebels series storyline, featuring many of the same characters, but now as live action actors. Like all Star Wars content, it’s pure space fantasy. But I continue to be impressed with the TV shows. They seem to have a depth largely missing from the movies, probably a result of just having more time to flesh out characters and storylines, but also I think from a conscious decision by someone involved in the production.

One big difference is the villains in these shows tend to be much more relatable. This one has a dark Jedi, who is clearly a bad guy, but sees himself on a mission to save humanity. And there’s a scene where a storm trooper is providing a mount for one of the heroes, and gives her a farewell of, “Die well”, seemingly a recognition of a fellow warrior’s bravery. I don’t want to oversell the moral ambiguity here. The heroes and villains remain pretty clear. But it’s a nice nuance.

That’s what I’ve been watching. Have you seen any of these? Or are you watching anything else worth checking out?